The Quiet Center

Having spent a few hours in isolation tanks back in the ’80s, I felt it was finally time to look into their chief promoter, John Lilly. I expected a tripped-out sendback to the ’60s but, instead, found myself encountering my favorite writers: Tom Robbins, Bucky Fuller and, of course, Joseph Campbell. Through these encounters, I came to admire Lilly for his doggedly scientific approach to answering (for himself, at least) The Big Questions, and began to wish I’d been a little more disciplined in my own adventures within the “void space” of the tank. In the end, however, Lilly’s experiments left him with nothing more–and nothing less–than “profound ignorance.”